Pierre manhes



UNITED STATESPATENT OFFICE.

PIERRE M ANHE S, OF LYONS, FRANCE.

PROCESS OF REFI'NING N ICKEL.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters Patent No. 409,992, dated August 27, I889.

Application filed December 19, 1888- Serial No. 294,113. (No model.)

To all whom it may concern: saltpeter. Under the action of air the metal Be it known that I, PIERRE MANHES, en gineer and metallurgist, a citizen of the Republic of France, and a resident of Lyons, France, have invented'new and useful Improvements in the Process of Refining Nickel and Cobalt, of which the following is a speciorder to satisfy the requirments of the industry, rnust undergo a refining treatment which brings them to astate which, if not absolutely pure, is at least comparatively pure. The other processes of treating these same ores also often produce crude metals, which likewise require to be refined in order to adapt them for the uses for which they are designed. Heretofore wet processes, which are invariably long, expensive, and difficult, have been almost exclusively employed for refining nickel and cobalt.

The process which forms the subject of this invention is a dry process, which assimilates, as it were, the metallurgy of nickel and cohalt to that of other metals.

The following is a description of the operation, the details of which as a whole consti- I tnte the improved process.

On leaving the converter or the apparatus in which it has been produced the crude nickel I or in any other apparatus capable of heating the metal to a red heat in an oxidizing medium, and they are thus maintained at. atemperature corresponding to a red heat for a longer or shorter time, according to the degree of purity of metal. The said time varies from six to ten hours. The oxidation can, however, be hastened, and its duration can therefore be diminished by projecting upon the plates of nickel or cobalt a little is oxidized at the surface without melting,

and when this oxidation is deemed sufficient,

which can be very readily seen after a little experience, the plates are removed from the furnace and allowed to cool. covered with a more or less thick crust. of

oxide.

The oxidized plates, as has been explained, are melted either in crucibles or in'a reverberatory furnace, or inany other melting apparatus, with the addition of an alkaline flux, such as potash, soda, borax, or the like; but sodium salts are preferable. During the melting the oxide on the surface of the plates reacts upon the mass of the metal by acting upon the materials which are more oxidable than nickel. eliminated in the state of sulphurous acid and the iron is transformed into the state of oxide. It is then that the alkaline flux acts and dissolves the oxide of iron, while it scarcely acts at all upon the oxide of nickel or cobalt. The result of the melting is therefore a comparatively pure nickel or cobalt, which is perfectly suitable for any industrial uses and a scoria which has absorbed all the oxide of iron produced, but'contains only traces of nickel or cobalt. I

I may observe that for the oxidation and melting twoapparatus can be dispensed with by employing a reverberatory furnace upon the sole of which the crude metal is first roasted, as above described, then melted in the same furnace by simply raising the temperature sufficiently.

The foregoing description appears 'to be They are then The last traces of sulphur are suificient to render the reactions understood j upon which the method which forms the sub-.

ject of this invention is based, and the application of which to the metallurgy of nickel and cobalt constitutes a new industrial prothe crude nickel or cobalt, then oxidizing the my name in the presence of two subscribing surface of the castings by means of oxidizing- Witnesses. flames in the presence of air then coolin the T .i castings, and afterward melting them in the PIERRE MAL 5 presence of an alkaline flux, substantially as Witnesses:

described. GEORGES FREYDIER DUBREUL,

In testimony whereof I have hereunto signed XAVIER J ANICOT. 

